Vito from Aeroplane is a man who gets to the point. And he is clear on what the Belgian duo are, and are not. What they are not is ‘cosmic’. What they like is pop. Specifically, Italian pop. Not the rare-as-hen’s-teeth 12” you have been hunting for on Discogs. Instead, Aeroplane find what they need in the records that lit up commercial discos in the early- to mid-1980s. The pure pop.

“That is where a lot of our inspiration comes. The melody. With all Italian pop/Italo disco, there is a thin line between good and bad, but what stands out for us in this music is the melodies. What we call Italo is really pop – it is not the same as what many other people are into, the more rare stuff, hunting for obscure records, the darker, more ‘techno’ end of things. We like the cheesy music, the music that was made by pop musicians.”

Vito draws a line between producers – people who make more functional dance music – and musicians, those who spend time on crafting songs. He acknowledges both of course, but for him, Aeroplane sit in one camp, and not the other. His background – classically trained at a youth – means this situation is unavoidable.

“It has been both good and bad. There is a lot of dance music that I love, a lot of crazy stuff that I cannot do, because of my background. I’m so used to making sure that the harmonies are right that I can’t get out of it. And sometimes I wish I could! But then on the other side, knowing how to put melodies and chords together is important to what we do as Aeroplane.”

There is a lot of dance music that I love that I cannot do because of my background

Perhaps this love of “cheesey” music is not suprising: Vito Deluca and Stefano Vasano are based in Belgium, but both are of Italian heritage, which further clarifies their melodramatic take on cosmic/Italo/pop. With only a handful of original releases to date, their real currency to date has been the remix, their versions of Friendly Fires and Grace Jones in particular.

Their approach to reworking other people’s music is pretty simple: “We try to turn the track upside down. We try to remove everything but the vocal, and start again from there. It was like with ‘Paris’ (the Friendly Fires’ rework which ditched the original lead vocal in favour of an inspired turn from Au Revoir Simone) – we turned that track into something totally new. It’s a remix – but it’s also like an original track for us. And that is what we try to do with our remixes, and I think that is how people got to know us. It’s not just adding a kick drum, or doing an edit of the original.”

A good time then, to ask about the glut of unimaginative disco edits circulating in the past 12 months. “Most of them are shit. They are too easy to do, you know… change some of the track, press up 500 copies, sell for 15 pounds… all shit! We did some around two years ago to play in our sets, and people like Todd Terje, Mark E and Pilloski all knew what they were doing. So now we do some still to play in our sets, but we are not adding anything to them, more to sync them in our sets.”

How has playing a series of festivals changed what you do when you play DJ sets? “We would play only pop music if we could, but that would not work for some of the gigs we play. So now we edit the pop stuff so we can sync them with the other music we play, because it has to be smooth. It’s like what 2 Many DJs do – they play a lot of pop, but edited and it works in the more techno stuff they play.

“When we did our first sets at the bigger events, we started off at 110bpm and after 20 minutes we realised no-one was dancing. So we had a problem. We had to find our own way. So now, we have a small pool of records that we play when we play bigger gigs. We get maybe 30 promos a week, but we only pick one or two of them to play, if they are Aeroplane records: melody and groove.

"And now we think we have found a way to do it: last week we played Pukkelpop in Belgium to maybe 4,000 people. And because we started at 110bpm, and finished at 125bpm, it was fine, because when you start slow, people think that 125 is fast at the end! So there are no compromises – there is a lot of stuff we like, club bangers, but if it is not right for us, we don’t play it.”

We are not a cosmic/disco act – we are not making dance music the way other people do.

The fact that a leftfield act still only a few releases old are playing events like this is quite remarkable. How did they get here? “The last two years went by so quickly, we didn’t realise what happening. So maybe we did not notice in a way.

"But we do not see ourselves as a cosmic/disco act: we are not dance music producers, we are not making dance music the same way other people do. For us, it is all about melodies and people’s words, things that make you want to hear a song again and again. It all grew so fast for us, but there is no secret to it.”

Vito has ducked out of the studio to speak to Bodytonic, and sounds tired after a weekend of DJing. The album has been a work in progress for a while, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. He perks up: “It’s the last week of the mix – our studio is in Belgium, and the engineer is in London. It’s complicated, but it’s working!”

Who have you worked with? Will the likes of Au Revoir Simone appear again? “Ah… we are working with lots of vocalists, but I don’t want to say which, as we haven’t decided on the final tracks that will be on the LP.” Do you have a title yet? “Yes, we have a title…”

That’s about as much information as Vito is willing to offer on the album, which is due on their long-time home, Eskimo. We talk for a while about albums made within the cosmic/disco scene, and how not many have really left a lasting impression.

Vito knows why. “There is nothing to ‘get’ you on too many of these records. Nothing to remember, or to sing in the shower. They are all well-produced, with good ideas, but it is like they have spent too much time panning the delay, or phasing elements for 12 minutes. If you listen to the last Lindstrom and Prins Thomas record, or Lindstrom’s solo one, they were different – because within the longer tracks, there was always something there, something in the middle. It’s not pop, but they always have a hook, something you can remember them by. It is the hook that makes it last.”

http://www.myspace.com/aeroplanemusiclove
Aeroplane play Electric Picnic on Sunday.